quote:The model María Imizcoz, the girlfriend of Bayern Munich star Javi Martínez, has been voted the hottest WAG in the Bundesliga by readers of German tabloid 'Bild'. "This has come as a complete surprise; I wasn't expecting it at all. There are so many beautiful women here… It's a huge honour to be chosen", the 21-year-old is quoted as saying in Friday's edition of the newspaper. María Imizcoz gained 13% of the almost 74,000 votes submitted for the survey run by 'Bild', which is the most widely circulated newspaper in Europe, with sales of three million copies a day. In second place, with 11% of the votes, came another model, Sarah Brandner, who has been dating Bastian Schweinsteiger – Javi Martínez's Bayern Munich teammate and fellow central midfielder – since 2007. The woman voted the third most beautiful WAG in the Bundesliga was Manel Filali, the Algerian singer from German pop group 'Milk & Honey'. Filali married Eintracht Frankfurt's French-Algerian striker Karim Matmour in 2009.

14 of 18 teams recorded a profit. I wonder how they're able to accomplish so much primarily off of advertising sales. Its vital that the German economy continues to grow for the bundesliga's growth to continue.

re: Bundesliga churning out record profits(Posted by wm72 on 1/26/13 at 9:00 pm to hendersonshands)

quote:Its vital that the German economy continues to grow for the bundesliga's growth to continue.

I tend to agree. The league's always been quality and will continue to be regardless.

However, the recent leap seems very tied to the German economy vs that of Spain, Italy, France and Portugal as those sponsorship numbers would bear out.

That kind of corporate support means they can sell tickets much lower than in other leagues and the resultant full houses sure does a lot to attract new fans. In comparison to the other three top leagues, I would assume Bundesliga has an insanely larger margin to improve on TV receipts if they can market outside of Germany.

That may need to come from more clubs outside of Bayern becoming transfer destinations for more Latin players that feature on their national teams as that's where La Liga and Serie A have a huge international following that could be tapped into to some degree.

From an outside perspective, the biggest thing would be Dortmund, Shalke et al. taking a step up to be sustained challengers to Bayern and other European giants without destroying the financial model in place.

However, the one difficulty concerning continued growth at the recent rate in respect to Italy and Spain may be how much Bundesliga's and Arsenal's financial models are being copied. That's why Juve, for example, with their new stadium is set to re-emerge as a power with Milan, Inter and Top20ish European sides like Fiorentina, Roma and Napoli following that financial example.